Devil in the sky, p.18
Devil in the Sky, page 18
Looking away from Odo, he watched the Hortas draw nearer. The first two had nearly reached the end of the tunnel, with the others trailing after them. Memories of his failure at the weapons towers came back to him. He didn’t bother to reach for his phaser. The Hortas looked larger now, and even more impenetrable, and they were getting closer by the second.
The ball is definitely in my court, he concluded. Good enough. If nothing else, Odo’s latest effort bought me time to set up one more trick. With any luck, it will be the last one I need.
“Shields at both ends of the bridge,” he demanded.
Odo shook his head; it swayed unnervingly at the end of an increasingly fluid neck. “They burn through shields faster than Quark slips through loopholes.” Even his voice seemed less solid. He gurgled instead of barked.
“Trust me,” O’Brien replied. “The shields are for our sake.” He tapped his comm, establishing a link with the central computer. “Deactivate artificial gravity in all bridges to the core.”
For once, the computer didn’t argue with O’Brien. Perhaps, he speculated, the damn program was as anxious to yank the rug out from under the Hortas as he was. After all, a small army of Hortas was only minutes away from invading the heart of Deep Space Nine. And if the Hortas started to devour the core, how long would it be before Ops itself was on the menu?
“Gravity canceled,” the computer announced. O’Brien watched with satisfaction as, one after another, the Hortas floated upward, away from the floor of the bridge. They hovered helplessly, suspended in a contained zero-gravity cell. The rustling filaments along their undersides whipped about uselessly, unable to achieve more than glancing contact with any other surface. A pair of drifting Hortas bumped into each other, then ricocheted away gently in opposite directions, where one of the Hortas knocked into a third, sending it spinning down the corridor back the way it had come while tumbling over and over in the air. Within seconds, all the Hortas were colliding in midair, bouncing back and forth along the corridor. It was like viewing a game of zero-g billiards played in slow motion.
Perfect, O’Brien thought. Nonlethal, but effective. He’d guessed that the Hortas, adapted by centuries of evolution to life within the dense interior of a planet, would be ill-equipped to cope with a gravity-free environment. And the truly beautiful part of the trap was that it actually took less energy to cut out the artificial gravity than to maintain it. From an engineering standpoint, he couldn’t help but appreciate the economy of his stratagem, especially considering the ravaged state of all the station’s systems. Maybe they could manage without Dax’s scientific expertise after all.
Then the Hortas began screaming: wild, ear-piercing screams that sounded like sirens blaring, or, O’Brien acknowledged reluctantly, like baby Molly in the grip of a nightmare. “They’re panicking,” he whispered to Odo.
“Yes,” Odo agreed. Even across the massive species boundaries separating humans from Hortas, the sound of pure fear was unmistakable.
The keening tore at O’Brien’s heart, but he could have lived with the screams if necessary. Better to terrify the poor babes than to annihilate them, or to let them take apart Deep Space Nine, bite by bite. The frightened Hortas did more than scream, though; they were spraying acid frantically in all directions. Jets of caustic liquid, orange as fire, spurted from every crack in the Hortas’ lumpy bodies. Globules of acid pooled in the air, forming glowing puddles of death levitating throughout the bridge, but for every burst that fell short of the surrounding surfaces, another spray splattered against the walls and flooring, turning solid metal into a bubbling, dripping mess that quickly evaporated to form gaping holes in the structure of the bridge. The drifting globs of acid soon found the walls as well, digging beneath the gray plating to the delicate mechanisms underneath. White-hot sparks leaped from damaged circuits. Flames and dark black smoke merged with the white steam of the Hortas’ corrosive secretions.
Through the sparking and the screaming, O’Brien could barely hear the desperate reports coming over his comm, but he got the gist of it right away. The acid storm created by the Hortas in their frenzy to escape their zero-g prison was wreaking havoc on systems on every level of the bridge.
O’Brien stared at the chaos and destruction. Not far away, one of the Hortas spun end over end as it sprayed blazing orange streamers all around it, like an antique pinwheel firework. But the desperate Hortas were much more dangerous, he knew, than any crude pyrotechnic device.
“Chief O’Brien,” the silver-haired technician called out. She pointed her Starfleet-issue tricorder at the sealed bridge. “Microwaves are flooding the bridge. The acid must have consumed the transmission nodes. Radiation levels are rising.”
Thank heaven the shields are still in place, O’Brien thought, but for how long? Smoking fissures and gaping scars marred the interior of the bridge, while the shrieking Hortas caromed through a sea of smoke, sparks, and flying acid. Forget the radiation, he thought. What about the structural integrity of the bridge itself?
“Computer,” he said. “Restore gravity to all crossover bridges immediately.”
The Cardassian program did not want to let the Hortas off so easily. “Requesting confirmation from commanding officer….”
“Bring that gravity back now,” O’Brien barked angrily, “while we still can!” As an afterthought, he added, “And, computer, locate and deactivate all damaged energy junctions.” Damn it, he thought, why couldn’t the Cardies have built a safe, reasonable EPS system into the station instead of their usual, cheap microwave array?
“Acknowledged,” the computer replied, surrendering to his authority. O’Brien felt a sudden humming vibration under his feet, and gravity returned to the corridor with a bang and splash. Eighteen Hortas crashed to the floor at once, while blobs of drifting acid fell like rain all along the bridge. The acid doused the Hortas, but left no marks upon their invulnerable shells. O’Brien watched, scowling, as the acid ran down the Hortas’ sides to wreak terrible damage on the bridge floor. How many levels, he wondered, would the falling acid burn through? He took comfort in knowing that the entire bridge had already been evacuated.
The nearest Horta, who moments before had spun like an acid-spewing top, landed upside down. Its tendrils flapped ineffectually in the air and, for a moment, O’Brien let himself hope that the Horta, like an overturned tortoise, would be unable to right itself. In that case, he’d simply grab a stick and give them all a good flip over onto their backs.
This simple plan died almost before he finished conceiving it. Before his eyes, the inverted Horta sunk into the floor, disappearing from sight. A second later, and a few yards away, it reemerged rightside up. Obviously, all the beastie needed was an instant surrounded by solids to orient itself again. “I don’t believe this!” O’Brien muttered. “Can’t anything stop these things?”
“On Janus VI,” Odo said with obvious difficulty, “they have no predators or crime. I checked.”
O’Brien glanced at his companion, trying hard not to stare too obviously. It looked like Odo had put all his effort into keeping his face, and especially his mouth, more or less intact. By contrast, gravity had pulled his hands and fingers down, elongating them so that his digits were thin, attenuated things with drop-shaped bulbs at the ends. The ripple beneath his uniform was now a surging current; Odo’s substance sloshed about audibly, driven by strange biological tides, barely contained by the anthropomorphic water balloon his body had become. Tiny beads of moisture dotted his imitation flesh; if O’Brien hadn’t known better, he might have mistaken them for perspiration.
“For God’s sake, man,” he said softly, conscious of Odo’s carefully maintained dignity. “There’s nothing more you can do here. Take care of yourself before, well, you know.”
Odo stared at O’Brien. His face no longer had definition enough to express any emotion. The look in his eyes might have been anger, or gratitude, or feelings O’Brien could not even guess at. Odo lifted one hand and watched it stretch like taffy toward the floor.
“You’re right,” he said quickly, then turned away. With his peripheral vision, O’Brien caught a glimpse of something gold and wet flowing away from the scene, in the direction of the Promenade. He hoped Odo would reach his office—and his pail—in time. But was any place on the Promenade safe, with the Hortas so close to the core? Deep inside, O’Brien doubted it.
“Eyes on the bridge,” he ordered the assembled team, and not just to let Odo make a clean escape. The Hortas had shaken off the trauma of their adventure in zero gravity. A mixed blessing, to be sure: the screaming had stopped, but the Hortas were on the move again.
And O’Brien had run out of tricks.
Frustrated, he slammed his fist into a bulkhead. This was the weapons towers all over again. You’re an idiot and a failure, he cursed himself. Even little Molly had handled the Hortas better than he had so far.
Molly …
With a start, O’Brien realized he still had one more card to play: Molly’s solution. “Feed them,” he said, softly at first, then louder and as an order. “Feed them,” he commanded. “Bulkheads, struts, spare parts … I want everything that isn’t nailed down brought to the Hortas pronto!” To demonstrate, he grabbed hold of the open cover of the fused control pad and wrenched it violently free from its hinges. He flung the thin sheet of metal in the path of the closest Horta. Bent and battered from O’Brien’s attack, the cover clanged loudly when it struck the floor of the bridge. The noise, or perhaps some tantalizing mineral odor the humans could not detect, attracted the Horta’s attention. It edged up to the cover, snuffling at it with its tendrils. Apparently the sheet was just what the doctor ordered; with an enthusiastic rumble, the rocky creature pounced upon O’Brien’s offering, hauling its entire body over and atop the cover. O’Brien heard the hiss of boiling metal and glimpsed a flash of glowing red through the fringe of filaments along the bottom of the Horta.
The sheet was a mere tidbit, however, which the Horta consumed almost instantly. Fortunately, Starfleet and Bajoran officers came scurrying from all directions, carrying fresh food for the Horta and its siblings: guardrails, cabinet doors, beakers, desktops, data clips, scanners, fire extinguishers, consoles, padds, microscopes, mugs, stepladders, carrying cases, tricorders, stools, suits of security armor, decorative kelinide-alloy molding, metal charts and public notices, even a large obsidian bust of Gul Dukat that must have been tossed unceremoniously in a closet shortly after the Bajorans laid claim to the station. O’Brien saw two hefty Bajorans carrying an entire airlock door between them. The large, gear-shaped object surely weighed a couple hundred pounds. Behind them, a Tiburonian lieutenant, the scalloped lobes of her ears flushed with exertion, clutched an engraved map of DS9; someone had painted the phrase YOU ARE HERE over the original Cardassian characters.
All spare or inessential material, or so O’Brien hoped. Still it seemed to do the job. The Hortas fell upon this bounty with an avidity that reassured him that his scheme was working, but that also distressed him owing to the sheer speed and energy with which the Hortas devoured all that was brought before them. All along the bridge, DS9 personnel stepped warily around acid-formed pits and crevices while Hortas feasted eagerly on quickly assembled piles of supplies and debris. For the present, a state of equilibrium existed, with his people adding to the piles about as quickly as the Hortas ate away at them, but how long could they keep up with the Hortas’ seemingly insatiable hunger? Staring at the creatures as they burned and burrowed into the heaps of junk, O’Brien felt like the manager of an all-you-can-eat flea market, and one that was rapidly running out of stock.
To his surprise, he saw Jake and Nog among the workers ferrying material to the Hortas. The commander’s son had an armful of genuine aluminum baseball bats, while Quark’s nephew struggled under the weight of what looked like a cheap cast-iron treasure chest. O’Brien worked his way through the busy line of Starfleet and Bajoran officers until he caught up with the boys only a few yards away from the great Horta barbecue. He dropped one meaty hand apiece on the boys’ shoulders. Nog squealed in fright, dropping the treasure chest onto the floor. The latch holding the chest’s lid shut snapped open upon impact, and the contents of the box spilled out before Nog’s feet. Glancing down, O’Brien saw a pile of jointed toy figurines, representing various sentient races: Vulcans, humans, Klingons, and many other types of males and females. Every figure was nude, he spotted instantly, and anatomically correct.
“Erotic action figures,” Nog explained, shrugging. “Kid stuff.” O’Brien realized with a start that chest had to be Nog’s old toy box. Nog looked embarrassed, but only slightly, like a teenager forced to show someone his baby pictures.
Ferengi, O’Brien thought. He shook his head to clear his brain of the ghastly image of tiny Ferengi toddlers at play with these obscene little models. “Look, lads,” he said, “you shouldn’t be here. It’s dangerous.”
“But, Chief,” Jake Sisko protested, “we have to help out somehow. We have to.” Nog nodded in agreement, although O’Brien thought the nod lacked both enthusiasm and sincerity.
He was struck, however, by the intensity in Jake’s voice, and the terrible yearning in the boy’s wide brown eyes. This was important to Jake, O’Brien knew, although he couldn’t begin to guess why. He considered the sports equipment in Jake’s arms; the commander and Jake had brought those bats all the way from Earth, O’Brien recalled, and if Jake was that eager to sacrifice his own precious possessions for the sake of the station, who was O’Brien to say him nay? For an instant, O’Brien recalled his first Starfleet assignment, and how vital it had been to prove himself back then. True, Jake was younger now than O’Brien had been then, but O’Brien thought he recognized the look in the boy’s—no, he corrected himself—the young man’s eyes.
Sisko may never-forgive me, O’Brien decided then and there, but I don’t have the heart to send him away. Besides, it’s not like anyplace on DS9 is truly safe from the Hortas.
And as for Nog? O’Brien averted his eyes while the Ferengi youth gathered up his scattered “playthings.” Well, he conceded reluctantly, any Ferengi who was willing to throw away anything, no matter how disgusting, deserved some credit.
“Okay,” he told them both, “you can stay for now, and scrounge for provisions. But I don’t want you getting anywhere near the Hortas, understand? And you’ll head for shelter the minute they get past the bridge. Got that?”
“Yes, Chief,” Jake said. The seriousness, and the desperation, in his voice was positively heartbreaking. Then he turned away quickly, as if terrified that O’Brien might change his mind at the last minute. “C’mon, Nog, let’s go lend a hand!”
Nog hesitated, gazing wistfully at a tiny replica of a green Orion slave girl. He held the figure up to his eyes and twirled it between his fingers.
“Nog!”
The Ferengi hastily stuck the doll into his boot and chased after his friend. “I’m coming,” he hollered. “I’m coming! What’s the rush?”
A red-suited crewman bustled past O’Brien, blocking his view of the boys. He carried a globe of Bajor that had most of its borders redrawn with bright green, erasable ink. Nobody, O’Brien noted, was sacrificing their weapons yet. Not far away, two Hortas happily shared an oval conference table. The stacks of melting Horta fodder glowed like bonfires.
“Security,” he instructed, hoping to bring some semblance of order to the scene, “continue bringing food for the Hortas. Maintenance and engineering, try to …” He paused and shook his head wearily. “Hell, try to repair the damage security is doing.”
This is not a long-term solution, O’Brien reminded himself firmly. The Hortas’ progress toward the core had been stalled temporarily, but not for long. Did he have to dismantle all of DS9 in order to save it? He prayed that Commander Sisko could pull some sort of rabbit out of his hat, as he had before, while there was still something of the station left.
In the meantime, he threw another console onto the bonfire.
* * *
“Gangway!” Quark grunted. “Let us by!” He scurried toward Crossover Bridge 3, shoving his way past teams of station personnel coming and going with heaps of Horta fodder. Behind him, Rom tried to keep up with his brother, even though he was laden with a stack of steel carrying cases, piled up past the top of Rom’s head. Quark looked over his shoulder. Why was Rom dawdling at a time like this? “Hurry, you dolt. There’s no time to waste.”
“Perhaps, brother,” Rom stuttered, “we would waste less time if you would help me carry these boxes?” His arms were wrapped around the bottom crate and his whole body swayed with the effort to keep the piled cases from tumbling over.
Quark merely hissed in reply. Some questions were not worth answering. He darted around a tall Coridan officer lugging a foot-long silver rod. He briefly considered informing her that the artifact in her hands was in fact a sacred Bajoran relic, which it was, but why bother? There was no profit in it. Besides, she was too skinny for anything else. He started to hurry past several more Starfleet flunkies, then heard a too familiar voice pipe up to the rear.
“Oh, excuse me. I mean, you don’t want to feed that to the Hortas. The Bajorans would be very upset….”
“Rom!” Quark snapped. He ground his molars together in frustration. Sometimes he wondered if his brother had been purchased in a discount offspring sale; if so, Quark bet that Rom had been marked down considerably.
Unsolicited helpful advice, offered free of charge! Quark marveled at the sheer magnitude of Rom’s foolishness. Next, Quark thought bitterly, he’ll be offering refunds!
As he drew nearer to Bridge 3, the activity around Quark increased. He navigated through the commotion, frequently looking backward to make sure Rom hadn’t fallen too far behind. Then, for a second, his eyes widened as he saw two unexpected sights heading down the corridor in the opposite direction: an immature male Ferengi and a dark-skinned human youth. He stroked one ear thoughtfully as he hurried on. What were Nog and Sisko’s son doing here? Those two had to be up to something. Quark resolved to look into the matter at the first opportunity. After all, as the Rules of Acquisition so wisely counseled: One person’s secret is another person’s opportunity.
